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“Plus, we’re also removing that huge array of settings, wheels and buttons found on professional cameras that have acted as a barrier for the majority of people to try and learn more about photography.”

Reframing and dual capture

Marcus and his colleagues wanted to make it easy for people to get the most of the Lumia 1020 camera and its monster 41-megapixel sensor – it was all about freedom, and removing the stress from capturing the moment.

One of the chief benefits of the huge sensor is the amazing amount of detail that it captures. You can zoom in and zoom in. And zoom in again.

“The Lumia 1020 captures such great amounts of detail that you can shoot without having to think about framing the shot, and then edit the picture afterwards to make it perfect. Thanks to this unique feature called dual capture, you get an easy to share 5-megapixel photo, but it also saves a full resolution image in the background so you can go back to that shot for endless reframing opportunities.”
“Reframing is really playful; you can play around with the rotation, create new images and tell different stories. It will revolutionise the way people take pictures forever,” says Marcus.

For example, imagine you’ve zoomed in to take a photo and then realised afterwards that the horizon isn’t straight. Thanks to our unique oversampling technology and dual capture feature in Pro Camera, you can zoom out and reframe it afterwards.

It’s like having an open book, with the choice to write a different ending each time you read it. You’ll discover and rediscover stories each time you go through your pictures.

Get creative

Reframing your photos is just one of the many ways that Pro Camera helps you to explore your creativity.

The four-second exposure time option means that with a very steady hand or aid of a tripod, you could take amazing night shots with light trails.

Marcus has an even more exciting idea:

“You can capture the trails from cars on a dark road at night, or do light painting with a pair of glow sticks or a lamp. Place the phone securely, take the picture and you can draw light patterns in the air. This is something that no other smartphone will do. There will be lots of fun low light experiments that you can try.”

Another rarity in the smartphone camera world is manual focus, which lets you capture stunning images with the ‘Bokeh’ effect. This is our favourite feature and makes your photos look professional with a minimal amount of effort. As you can see by this photo, the foreground looks crystal clear and the background elegantly fades away.

Touch controls

Instead of deep diving into menus, Nokia Pro Camera uses sliders and clear visual indicators on the display of the Lumia 1020 to let you control the camera settings.

Using Nokia Pro Camera you can control settings such as:

Shutter speed (1/16000 to 4 seconds)

EV value

ISO (100 to 4,000)

White balance

Manual focus

“Mobile photographers have never been able to fully control parameters like shutter speed, so if you wanted to take a long exposure shot of a night scene, you had to use a DSLR-camera or similar,” says Marcus.

“However, such cameras don’t have the usability of a big touchscreen with multi-touch, and the ability to do gestures like swipe & two-finger-rotate. You have to use scroll wheels and buttons to navigate long menus, and really know what you’re doing. Now with Pro Camera you get a great user interface and creative control!”

Another neat illustration of how Nokia is pioneering and simplifying touch-enabled and graphical camera interfaces is the slide zoom feature.

Normally, with pinch to zoom you need two hands to operate it, one to hold the smartphone and another to pinch on the display. With Pro Camera, you can hold the Lumia 1020 and slide to zoom with one hand, letting you focus on getting closer to the action.

A camera for everyone

If discussion of exposure and ISO settings sounds like too much hard work – don’t worry – Nokia Pro Camera is for you as well!

There is a fun and engaging tutorial built in to the Pro Camera app that teaches you how to take professional-looking photographs.

Of course, even with all the technical settings, you can also choose not to use them. Simply point and shoot, and you have the best quality picture imaginable – ready to go straight to your home screen tiles or Facebook.

“Nokia Pro Camera is a powerful camera system, super simple to use and, best of all, it fits into your pocket as well, “ Marcus concludes.

Nokia Pro Camera will be available for Nokia Lumia 1020 at launch and it will also be coming to all Nokia Lumia PureView smartphones (Lumia 920, 925 and 928), but will require an upgrade to the latest Amber software.